Long Lines, But Still Short On Gas

More Trucks To Roll, Stations Expected To Power Up Today

Gasoline in South Florida remained scarce on Thursday, even as four tankers docked at Port Everglades and refiners sent dozens of portable electric plants to idle stations to get fuel pumping from underground tanks.

For the third day running, drivers waited for hours to fill up at the small but growing number of stations that were open.

Security became an issue as tensions rose, particularly in Palm Beach County, where sheriff's deputies were not available to keep order at stations. In Broward County, deputies did stand duty at some gas outlets.

Many in South Florida rose before dawn to be first in line for gas, but their pains weren't always rewarded.

At a Sunoco gas station and convenience store near Congress Avenue and Forest Hill Boulevard west of West Palm Beach, customers started lining up for gas at 5:30 a.m. Thursday in anticipation of a 7 a.m. opening. A clerk said the day before there was plenty of gas, but no one showed up to open the station at 7 a.m. By 8:30 a.m., motorists started to leave, bewildered that the place never did open.

Elsewhere, hospitals wrangled to find enough gas so their essential staff could make it into work. North Broward Medical Center in Deerfield Beach, among others, sent vans and private cars to pick up doctors, nurses and other health care workers stranded with empty gas tanks. Co-workers set up car pools.

Air traffic controllers at Miami International Airport complained that fuel shortages were preventing controllers from getting to work.

But there were some signs of improvement, too.

Tankers docked at Port Everglades, which reopened to ships for the first time since Sunday. Draining the ships of their cargo could take up to 36 hours, Port Director Phil Allen said, but truckers have been loading gas from the port's tank farm since Tuesday, he said.

The port is the main transit point for gasoline coming to South Florida. About 700 trucks were expected to leave the port with full loads of gas on Thursday, down from about 1,000 a day when gas stations are all open.

About 80 million gallons of gasoline were in holding tanks at the port before Hurricane Wilma.

Most gas stations have fuel but can't dispense it because the pumps are powered by electricity. One wholesaler, Amerada Hess, has sent 40 electrical generators to its stations and hired a seven-person crew to install the power plants.

Hess said two-thirds of its 62 South Florida stations were open Thursday and the rest should be pumping fuel by today.

Other companies may be helped by Florida Power & Light Co., which said Thursday that if there is a gas station or convenience store in the area where a crew is repairing a line, they will make it a priority to hook it up.

But for many drivers, it was too little, too late.

Diana Constanza was the last person in a line that stretched more than a mile from the Discount Gas station on Key Biscayne. She said she had no choice but to suffer the wait because she lives on Key Biscayne and commutes to her job as a project manager at a construction company in Doral, which is 20 miles away. Her Mazda 323 was down to a quarter-tank.

"It's construction, and we're really busy now, so I have to work," she said.